It Might Be a Tense GreeceGermany Game Today

Like everyone who writes about sports professionally, we find the real world a terrifying place, somewhere we try to avoid as much as possible. But we can't resist the delicious European Championship quarterfinal today. At 2:45 ET, Germany will play Greece. Of all the times in soccer history for these two countries to play each other, there might not have been a better one than now; Germany, of course, is in the midst of a (probable) bailout of Greece, with plenty of strings attached, including a massive restructuring of the entire Greek economy. The hardliner on this is German chancellor Angela Merkel, who will in fact be attending the game today. (Somehow we imagine her walking up and down the Greek sideline, making sure no one's wasting Gatorade or making long-distance calls.) We know it's just a soccer game, but this feels like a potential global incident. And you thought the Subway Series had bad blood.